Hevo vs Fivetran: Which ELT Solution Will Drive Your Data Strategy Forward?

Quick Takeaway

Hevo Data and Fivetran are both leading players in the data integration space, but they cater to different business needs with distinct capabilities.

• Hevo is a simple, no-code platform designed for businesses that prioritize ease of use, real-time syncing, and automation without needing extensive setup. It’s an excellent choice for companies looking for a quick-to-implement solution with minimal technical complexity.
  
• Fivetran, on the other hand, is a feature-rich platform that excels in scalability, advanced ELT functionality, and a wide selection of pre-built connectors. It’s the best fit for businesses that need a powerful, flexible solution capable of handling complex data workflows.

Key Features:

Hevo:

• No-code, real-time data syncing for effortless integration
• A variety of pre-built connectors to ensure smooth data migration
• Automated data transformation and loading for streamlined workflows

Fivetran:

• An extensive library of pre-built connectors across multiple data sources
• Automated, fully managed ELT pipelines that scale with your business needs
• Advanced features for data transformation, monitoring, and control for more intricate data setups

When to Choose:

• Choose Hevo if you need a simple, intuitive platform that offers quick deployment and minimal setup, with real-time syncing for easy data integration.
• Choose Fivetran if your business requires a comprehensive, scalable ELT solution with advanced features, ideal for complex workflows and organizations that demand more flexibility and control.

Are you trying to consolidate massive datasets from multiple sources into a single, unified cloud warehouse? Do you need a tool that automates data flows across diverse platforms while ensuring your information stays fresh with minimal manual effort? Or are you tackling complex, large‑scale data transformations that demand a highly adaptable solution?

Today, platforms like Fivetran and Hevo Data have emerged as popular choices for teams looking to centralize and streamline their data pipelines. Both are powerful, no‑code, automated ELT platforms, but when it comes to security, scalability, flexibility, and customization, they have distinct differences that can have a big impact on your organization.

So, how do you pick the right one? In this guide, we’ll compare Fivetran and Hevo Data across these critical areas and help you decide which platform is the best fit for your team, your data, and your long‑term objectives.

Hevo vs. Fivetran at a Glance

Hevo Data shines with its intuitive, user‑friendly design and robust support for ELT and ETL. It excels in getting pipelines up and running quickly, making it ideal for teams that want to centralize their data across SaaS applications, databases, and data warehouses, with minimal setup or ongoing maintenance. 

Its near‑real‑time capabilities and growing list of connectors have earned it the trust of over 2,000 customers worldwide, including names like DoorDash, Shopify, and ThoughtSpot. 

Hevo differentiates itself with its user‑friendly experience, low‑latency replication, and built-in support for both ELT and reverse ELT pipelines. 

Hevo Transformer is an all-in-one platform for in-warehouse data transformations, built to work seamlessly with dbt Core™. With quick integration to warehouses like Snowflake, Hevo Transformer simplifies complex data tasks like joins, aggregations, and denormalization, helping teams turn raw data into insights faster.

Best Suited For

Customer Testimonial

We did a proper evaluation between Hevo and its competitors. We realized that Hevo provided the best value out of all of them; it had all the features that we wanted at a price that we were comfortable with. It was the best option for us.

Prudhvi Vasa

Head of Data

View Customer Story

Fivetran, on the other hand, has evolved into an enterprise‑grade data integration powerhouse. With over 600 fully managed connectors, built‑in dbt support, and seamless reverse ELT thanks to its Census acquisition, it caters to organizations with complex, large‑scale environments. Fivetran is trusted by enterprise leaders such as ASICS, Square, and Red Ventures. 

Fivetran stands out with its expansive connector library, deep enterprise focus, and seamless integration of dbt and Census for end‑to‑end analytics and data activation. 

Best Suited For

Customer Testimonial

Fivetran excels at doing one thing incredibly well: reliably syncing data from multiple SaaS tools into a central data warehouse like BigQuery. The setup is remarkably fast—most connectors are essentially plug-and-play, with minimal configuration. I especially appreciate the wide connector library, automatic schema management, and robust alerting system. For a small team without a full-time data engineer, it’s a game-changer. It eliminates a ton of manual work and lets us focus on deriving insights rather than wrangling APIs.

Dennis C.

Head of Business Operations

Both platforms can supercharge data pipelines, but which one is the right fit for your team? Let’s break down their key features, differences, and ideal use cases.

Hevo vs. Fivetran –  A Detailed Feature Comparison

Both Hevo Data and Fivetran are strong contenders for extracting, loading, and transforming data across platforms. Yet, while they have overlapping core capabilities, they appeal to different types of organizations due to their approach, pricing, and feature focus.

Real Feedback from Users

For Cost‑Conscious Teams and High Volume and Throughput Cases: 

Hevo is an excellent fit for businesses that want a robust data integration solution without unpredictable pricing. Its subscription‑based model and free tier for up to one million events give teams a clear picture of their costs, making it ideal for growing or mid‑sized businesses where cost control is a priority. Its pricing and ease of use mean you can scale data pipelines reliably while avoiding the surprises that often come with usage‑based pricing. 

Plus, Hevo excels when it comes to reliably handling large, high‑velocity datasets. Its near‑real‑time streaming, built‑in CDC capabilities, and dynamic schema mapping enable seamless replication even as data volumes grow. 

For Complex, Enterprise‑Scale Data Needs:

Fivetran shines in environments where complexity is the norm. Its expansive library of over 700 fully managed connectors allows it to integrate seamlessly with a huge range of SaaS platforms, databases, and cloud services. Coupled with deep dbt and Census integrations, it’s ideal for enterprise‑level data engineering teams managing complex, multi‑source environments where precision, reliability, and scalability matter. It’s built for organizations that want a tool that can adapt to intricate data models and sophisticated analytics pipelines.

Hevo Data vs Fivetran: Comparison Against 4 Key Buying Criteria

If you’re evaluating Hevo and Fivetran, you’re likely dealing with growing data pipelines or a complex enterprise environment. The best choice depends on your priorities: speed and simplicity vs. scale and depth of enterprise features. 

Here’s how they compare across four critical areas, with a clear takeaway for each.

#1 Replication Modes 

Hevo supports three replication modes:

• Log‑Based Replication: Provides WAL (Write‑Ahead Logs) with TEST_DECODING for highly efficient, low‑impact replication.
• Table Mode: Hevo writes SQL queries on the customer’s database and extracts data from a modified timestamp column.
• Custom SQL: Enables extracting only the necessary data by letting you write a custom SQL query.
  

What Does This Mean for Businesses?

Hevo is optimized to reduce load on your production database. When connected to a production database, Hevo delivers more reliable replication and minimizes strain, making it ideal for environments where performance and stability are critical.

✅ Choose Hevo if: You want replication modes that minimize load on production databases and reliably scale with growing data and varied use cases.

Fivetran offers two replication modes:

• Teleport Syncs: A non‑log‑based approach where Fivetran takes a snapshot of the table and stores it in a staging area. The ingestion process then compares this snapshot with the previous version to identify changes, including deletes.
  
  • Limitation: This approach only works reliably for tables with a primary key and doesn’t scale well for higher data volumes or very large tables. It can consume significant database resources and slow down replication as data grows.
    
• Log‑Based Replication: Fivetran provides three options — WAL with Pgoutput, WAL with TEST_DECODING, and Xmin.
  
  • Limitation: Fivetran’s log‑based replication operates in batch mode, flushing the log only after the replication finishes. Customers have reported that this approach struggles to maintain reliability when faced with sudden data surges and higher data volumes.

✅ Choose Fivetran if: You have moderately sized tables and predictable batch‑based replication needs, and your database schema already suits its limitations.

#2 Platform Flexibility and Set‑Up

Real‑Time Streaming

Hevo is built on Kafka, making it a truly stream‑oriented platform.  In contrast, Fivetran’s architecture is primarily batch‑based, which means it doesn’t support a truly real‑time data pipeline for all customers. In most cases, data is transferred hourly, making it ideal for predictable, less time‑sensitive workloads.

Schema Management

With Fivetran, you’re restricted to a one‑to‑one schema approach. It doesn’t support merging data from different databases or schema namespaces into a single destination schema. It maintains the source schema and table hierarchy in the destination, making it ideal if you want a direct, faithful replica of the source schema.

Hevo, on the other hand, provides much more flexibility:

• Push multiple databases or schema namespaces into a single destination schema.
• Merge the same tables across various source databases/schemas into a consolidated destination schema.
• Pre‑fix destination table names quickly to enforce naming standards across your organization.

Transformation Capabilities

Fivetran provides only limited pre‑load transformations through its UI — allowing you to drop columns or mask sensitive data. The focus is largely on post‑load transformations, relying on dbt for more advanced data shaping and modeling.

Hevo takes this a step further. Its robust pre‑load transformations enable teams to clean and shape data before it lands in the warehouse. Through a simple drag‑and‑drop interface or custom Python scripts, you can:

• Perform early data cleaning and filtering,
• Convert currency or measurement units,
• Exclude unwanted rows,
• And save warehouse compute costs by extracting only relevant, properly formatted data.

For post-load transformations, Hevo and Fivetran both use dbt Core.

#3 Pricing and Cost of Ownership

Hevo has a transparent pricing model that ensures no billing surprises even as you scale. There are four pricing tiers. Each plan has different product capabilities attached to it, with tighter SLAs as we go up the plan and according to the customer’s needs. 

• Free Trial Plan: This plan reliably moves minimal data from SaaS tools. There are 50+ SaaS-based connectors, and the consumption limit is 1 million events (rows updated, deleted, or added)
• Starter Plan: This plan is for moving limited amounts of data from SaaS tools and databases. It starts at $239/Month for 5 million events and goes up to $759/Month for 50 million events. 
• Professional Plan: This plan is for considerable data needs and higher control over data ingestion. It starts from $679/Month for 20 million and gives you access to streaming pipelines and low-latency workloads. 
• Business Critical Plan: This plan is built for advanced data requirements like real-time data ingestion. It supports streaming pipelines, role-based access control, single sign-on, multiple workspaces, and VPC Peering. It also has Advanced security certificates and Add-ons. To access this, you need to contact Sales.

Note: Hevo also offers a few add-ons that can be availed by talking to sales representatives. 

Fivetran offers four pricing models:

• Free Plan: This plan is for individuals automating ELT for small volumes of data. It gives access to Standard Plan features and up to 500,000 monthly active rows (MAR) free of charge. 
• The Starter Plan: This plan is for achieving modern ELT for your application and file sources. You can access up to ten users for a one-hour sync. Fivetran does not allow Database connectors in its starter plan; it is limited to an enterprise plan. 
• The Standard Plan: It allows you to centralize product and transactional data from your databases. Unlimited users can access it for 15-minute syncs. 
• The Enterprise Plan: It lets you connect to an enterprise database connector for 1-minute syncs. It also allows for detailed roles and support for teams. This means that a few connectors are not available in plans lower than the Enterprise plan. To get the sync to 1 min, Fivetran usually connects to HVR to get the same.

Read our detailed blog on Fivetran’s pricing change

Hevo offers a transparent pricing model and capabilities that scale with every plan. In contrast, Fivetran provides various plans catering to different data needs with faster sync intervals and advanced connectors, but at a potentially higher cost. 

Wondering if you need Hevo alternatives? Learn why top data engineers trust Hevo as the leading ELT platform and why it stands out in the Hevo vs Fivetran comparison.

4. Security and Compliance

Data Privacy Regulations

• Hevo Data offers robust security features. It complies with the General Data Protection Regulation, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Service Organization Control 2 (SOC 2), and the California Consumer Privacy Act, now also achieving DORA compliance, paving the way into the EU financial services sector.
• Fivetran security features include SOC 2 Type 2, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR regulations.

Data Security

• Hevo Data supports AES encryption to protect data at rest and in transit. This encryption also acts as an extra layer of protection by securing sensitive information during storage and transmission.
• Fivetran has PrivateLink features for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, allowing on-premise services to connect privately with cloud-based infrastructure. 

Authentication

• Hevo Data employs SAML 2.0 for Single Sign-on (SSO) integration and enforces two-factor authentication. It also offers additional networking options such as SSH, reverse SSH, and VPC peering.
• Fivetran too employs SMAL 2.0 and two-factor authentication for all user accounts, enhancing security during access provision. They also provide additional networking options such as SSH, reverse SSH, and VPC peering.

Workspaces

• Hevo Data provides a unique capability; users can create up to five different workspaces in the same domain but on separate instances. This flexibility is very handy, especially when dealing with companies operating across multiple nations, where data must be maintained within specific zones only. 
• Fivetran, however, lacks the flexibility in workspaces. This may limit flexibility for global organizations that want their data stored in specific regions.

Error Detection

• Error identification and auto-correction mechanisms are default features of Hevo’s monitoring system. Alerts can be sent through Slack or email.
•  Fivetran also supports error identification and an auto-correction mechanism, and the alerts can be notified via email or Slack.

Migrate Data seamlessly Within Minutes!

Start For Free

No credit card required

Compare Alooma vs Fivetran vs Hevo with our detailed guide to choose the best data integration solution for your needs.

Check out our detailed blogs on:

• Hevo vs Striim
• Fivetran vs Talend
• Fivetran vs Striim

Hevo vs Fivetran – Which ELT tool should you pick?

When to Choose Hevo Data ? 

Hevo is ideal for mid‑market businesses and growing teams that value simplicity, transparency, and quick results. Its quick 4‑step setup takes just minutes, making it easy for smaller teams to get started and focus on extracting value from their data. 

Hevo’s Kafka‑based architecture delivers near real‑time streaming capabilities, making it ideal for businesses that want fresh data available instantly. Its robust schema‑management allows merging multiple databases and user‑defined storage options into a single destination, providing both agility and control.

Hevo also shines for teams that want the ability to customize pipelines with pre‑load transformations, using drag‑and‑drop or Python‑based layers, and for those that expect pricing clarity. Its event‑based pricing model is transparent, making it easy to understand and predict costs as your data usage grows. 

All of this is backed by strong security controls, making Hevo a great fit for mid‑market organizations that want a balance of performance, cost efficiency, and compliance.

With Hevo Data, you create a connection out of 1000 objects, select 10 objects you really need, apply minimal transformations, and Hevo Data will take care of it. It will run every day, send you notifications, you can go back, you can restart the pipeline, and it will just refresh the data.

Karan Singh Khanuja

Data Scientist

View Customer Story

When to Choose Fivetran? 

Fivetran is best suited for large enterprises that operate in highly complex environments and value expansive connectivity. Its library of 700+ connectors and deep integrations with SaaS platforms and databases make it ideal for organizations extracting data from a vast range of sources. 

Fivetran is built for businesses that have already invested in sophisticated data infrastructure and benefit from its automated transformations, pre‑defined schema templates, and advanced role‑based access controls.

While its batch‑based architecture and pricing model can be challenging for smaller or cost‑conscious teams, Fivetran delivers when sheer connectivity, enterprise‑level security, and seamless dbt/Census integration matter more than pricing transparency. 

It’s an ideal fit for larger enterprises where connector breadth, scalability, and advanced compliance justify higher and more complex pricing.

If your organization values real-time data streaming, flexible schema management, and a transparent and cost-effective pricing model, Hevo is likely the better choice. Try Hevo’s 14-day free trial and experience the ease of seamless data migration.

Ultimately, it depends on what kind of use case you are trying to solve and whether either company can fulfill it. Both Hevo and Fivetran offer robust tools. They help streamline your data workflows and support data-driven decision-making in your organization.

For a deeper exploration of alternatives to Fivetran.

Frequently Asked Questions

Arun Chaudhary Senior Sales Engineer

Arun Chaudhary is a Senior Sales Engineer at Hevo Data, bringing over 10 years of expertise in sales engineering and pre-sales consulting. Specializing in solutions engineering and business value creation, Arun excels in building robust business cases and delivering tailored solutions. He is proficient in ETL, ELT, and RPA development with a strong background as a Java developer.